[ENG] Premiership 2008/2009 (167 Viewers)
- Thread starter Azzurri7
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In the Observer today they have a list of potential transfer targets for Man United and Chelsea this summer. Some interesting ones.
For United
Igor Akinfeev- good young keeper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Akinfeev
Wilson Palacios and Antonio Valencia from Wigan- WTF??!
Luis Fabiano- more than good enough to replace Saha.
Dani Alves- Very good attacking right-back but he'd prefer a move to Barcelona.
Micah Richards- Wouldn't be a popular move amongst the Man City fans but he's a good young defender.
Miguel Veloso- I don't know much about this guy but Man United have been linked with him for ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Veloso
For Chelsea
Rafael van der Vaart- Very good player.
Kaka- He's staying at Milan IMO.
Klaas Jan Huntelaar- He was on great form this season, he has made no secret of his desire to leave Ajax this summer. He wants to use Euro 2008 to impress some big clubs.
David Villa- An alternative to Huntelaar. Another very good striker who is looking to move to a bigger club this summer.
Robinho- Seems unlikely.
Sergio Ramos- Very unlikely. Real don't want to sell him and he doesn't want to leave.
In other news, Xabi Alonso could be on his way to Juventus and Juve's Davide Lanzafame could be heading for West Ham.
Lyon keeper Gregory Coupet says he'll quit Lyon. Spurs are linked to him.
Alexander Hleb's agent says he is definitely leaving Arsenal.
Mourinho has called Grant "a loser".
For United
Igor Akinfeev- good young keeper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Akinfeev
Wilson Palacios and Antonio Valencia from Wigan- WTF??!
Luis Fabiano- more than good enough to replace Saha.
Dani Alves- Very good attacking right-back but he'd prefer a move to Barcelona.
Micah Richards- Wouldn't be a popular move amongst the Man City fans but he's a good young defender.
Miguel Veloso- I don't know much about this guy but Man United have been linked with him for ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Veloso
For Chelsea
Rafael van der Vaart- Very good player.
Kaka- He's staying at Milan IMO.
Klaas Jan Huntelaar- He was on great form this season, he has made no secret of his desire to leave Ajax this summer. He wants to use Euro 2008 to impress some big clubs.
David Villa- An alternative to Huntelaar. Another very good striker who is looking to move to a bigger club this summer.
Robinho- Seems unlikely.
Sergio Ramos- Very unlikely. Real don't want to sell him and he doesn't want to leave.
In other news, Xabi Alonso could be on his way to Juventus and Juve's Davide Lanzafame could be heading for West Ham.
Lyon keeper Gregory Coupet says he'll quit Lyon. Spurs are linked to him.
Alexander Hleb's agent says he is definitely leaving Arsenal.
Mourinho has called Grant "a loser".
The boss has said that Nasri is going to sign in the next few days, what a signing he's going to be, i believe he is more talented than both Hleb and Rosicky, and he will gradually be better than the former(he's already better than Rosicky).
Now a centerback and a top quality goalkeeper and we're all set for next season.
Now a centerback and a top quality goalkeeper and we're all set for next season.
Barca agree Pique deal
Defender to return to Camp Nou on four-year deal
Gerard Pique is set to return to Barcelona after the Spanish side reached an agreement with Manchester United.
The defender opted to leave Camp Nou four years ago because he felt that he would have a better chance of breaking through at Old Trafford.
However, he failed to establish himself as a regular in Sir Alex Ferguson's side and his opportunities continued to be limited this season due to the reliable central defensive partnership of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic.
Pique rarely featured in the run-in as United sealed a European and domestic double, and was left out of the squad for the UEFA Champions League final.
He has now decided it is time to move on and has agreed a four-year contract with Barcelona.
The 21-year-old Spaniard, who scored two goals in the Champions League for United, is now expected to finalise his transfer over the next few days.
Sky Sports
Defender to return to Camp Nou on four-year deal
Gerard Pique is set to return to Barcelona after the Spanish side reached an agreement with Manchester United.
The defender opted to leave Camp Nou four years ago because he felt that he would have a better chance of breaking through at Old Trafford.
However, he failed to establish himself as a regular in Sir Alex Ferguson's side and his opportunities continued to be limited this season due to the reliable central defensive partnership of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic.
Pique rarely featured in the run-in as United sealed a European and domestic double, and was left out of the squad for the UEFA Champions League final.
He has now decided it is time to move on and has agreed a four-year contract with Barcelona.
The 21-year-old Spaniard, who scored two goals in the Champions League for United, is now expected to finalise his transfer over the next few days.
Sky Sports
Please be kind and send us one of Hleb or Rosicky.
Nasri is a very sick player and he'll excel at Arsenal without a doubt. I'm just practically jealous of how they secure so many young talents and we are stuck with morons here saying "we already have Giovinco" or "we don't need young talents we need experience," or whatever other bullshit is typed by these pea brains.
Nasri is a very sick player and he'll excel at Arsenal without a doubt. I'm just practically jealous of how they secure so many young talents and we are stuck with morons here saying "we already have Giovinco" or "we don't need young talents we need experience," or whatever other bullshit is typed by these pea brains.
Survey Says English Players In Prem At Record Low
A BBC survey has revealed that the number of England-qualified players starting matches in the Barclays Premier League dropped to an all-time low in the season just concluded.
Research by BBC Sport has found that just 170 - 34.1 per cent - of the 498 players who started matches in the English top flight during the 2007-08 season were English.
The figure represents a substantial decline from the previous season, 2006-07, when 191 (38 per cent) of starters were English.
"The number is important because that's what I can choose from," conceded England manager Fabio Capello when asked about BBC Sport's findings yesterday. However, he stressed: "But more important is quality - the level of the player. At the moment the total is 34 per cent but the level [ie, the quality] is high. The work being done in the academies is very important. We probably have to change the system of training for young players.
"At Under-21, and younger national teams, we have a lot of good players. For the future, I hope next season is not 34 per cent but 40 per cent. It will be better for me and England football."
In last week's Champions League final, two English teams fielded 10 Englishmen among the 22 starters, but as European Championships are about to kick-off without England present, the diminishing pool of homegrown talent is a concern.
And in the week that Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, is pushing his 'six-plus-five' quota proposal on a resistant club game, the figures appear to provide him with ammunition.
Blatter is convinced that restricting the number of foreign starters each club is allowed to just five will redress the balance. The problem, apart from the vehement opposition of clubs, is that his plan flies in the face of European Union employment law.
The English Premier League is opposed on principle, because if Blatter's quota plan becomes a rule within football, it would pose a masive challenge for English clubs: last season, fewer than one in five starting line-ups would have satisfied Blatter's requirements.
To put it another way, on average, only four players were qualified to represent England in each Premier League starting line-up last season.
Arsenal had the fewest English starters, averaging 0.34 per match, and West Ham United the most at 6.61.
In fact West Ham and Aston Villa (6.42) were the only two clubs in the Barclays Premier League to average more than six English starters last season. The 'Big Four' - Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool - averaged only 2.64 between them per game.
The situation was different in Scotland, where there were 6.27 Scotland-qualified players per starting line-up in the Scottish Premier League, meabing that while only 18 per cent of English line-ups met Blatter's quota, 56.8 per cent of Scotland's did.
Six of the 12 SPL teams (Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Motherwell and Rangers) met the "six-plus-five" criterion in every match - not that it led to the Scots qualifying for Euro 2008 either.
However, the English figures also contrast sharply with those for Europe's other major leagues.
On the final weekend of the season, for example, there wre on average 7.3 Italians starting per Serie A team, 6.9 Spaniards per Primera Liga side, and 4.9 Germans per Bundesliga XI.
Although Italy, Spain and Germany all qualified for Euro 2008 and are among the favourites to win the tournament, the Premier League rightly rejected attempts to link the performance of the English national team with the number of foreign players top-flight English football. After all, England were under-performing on the international stage long before the number of foreign players in the domestic League became an issue.
England's only success remains winning the World Cup in 1966, and for all but the last dozen or so of the intervening 42 years, the English top-flight was overwhelmingly stocked by British-born players.
"Merely looking at numbers of England players in the Premier League is a blunt and misleading measure as to how well the national team should be doing," a Premier League statement argued.
"After all, in the 70s and 80s the vast majority of players in the top flight were eligible for England yet we routinely struggled to qualify for tournaments, let alone perform in them.
"Our figures show this season nearly 40% of the starting XIs were qualified to play for England, 10 of whom played in the Champions League Final, arguably the highest standard of football in the world.
"There is no shortage of players at the highest level to pick from but we all want to see more Englishmen capable of performing at this level.
"That is why Premier League clubs invest more than £40m a season in youth development, that is why the Premier League, along with the FA and the Football League, are driving through reforms to ensure the quality of coaching and player development is of the highest standard.
"We must raise standards, not implement something that will never happen under European law and would only create a broader pool of average players rather than a deeper one of the right level of talent for Premier League clubs and England."
goal.com
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All hail the Non-English Premier League
A BBC survey has revealed that the number of England-qualified players starting matches in the Barclays Premier League dropped to an all-time low in the season just concluded.
Research by BBC Sport has found that just 170 - 34.1 per cent - of the 498 players who started matches in the English top flight during the 2007-08 season were English.
The figure represents a substantial decline from the previous season, 2006-07, when 191 (38 per cent) of starters were English.
"The number is important because that's what I can choose from," conceded England manager Fabio Capello when asked about BBC Sport's findings yesterday. However, he stressed: "But more important is quality - the level of the player. At the moment the total is 34 per cent but the level [ie, the quality] is high. The work being done in the academies is very important. We probably have to change the system of training for young players.
"At Under-21, and younger national teams, we have a lot of good players. For the future, I hope next season is not 34 per cent but 40 per cent. It will be better for me and England football."
In last week's Champions League final, two English teams fielded 10 Englishmen among the 22 starters, but as European Championships are about to kick-off without England present, the diminishing pool of homegrown talent is a concern.
And in the week that Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, is pushing his 'six-plus-five' quota proposal on a resistant club game, the figures appear to provide him with ammunition.
Blatter is convinced that restricting the number of foreign starters each club is allowed to just five will redress the balance. The problem, apart from the vehement opposition of clubs, is that his plan flies in the face of European Union employment law.
The English Premier League is opposed on principle, because if Blatter's quota plan becomes a rule within football, it would pose a masive challenge for English clubs: last season, fewer than one in five starting line-ups would have satisfied Blatter's requirements.
To put it another way, on average, only four players were qualified to represent England in each Premier League starting line-up last season.
Arsenal had the fewest English starters, averaging 0.34 per match, and West Ham United the most at 6.61.
In fact West Ham and Aston Villa (6.42) were the only two clubs in the Barclays Premier League to average more than six English starters last season. The 'Big Four' - Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool - averaged only 2.64 between them per game.
The situation was different in Scotland, where there were 6.27 Scotland-qualified players per starting line-up in the Scottish Premier League, meabing that while only 18 per cent of English line-ups met Blatter's quota, 56.8 per cent of Scotland's did.
Six of the 12 SPL teams (Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Motherwell and Rangers) met the "six-plus-five" criterion in every match - not that it led to the Scots qualifying for Euro 2008 either.
However, the English figures also contrast sharply with those for Europe's other major leagues.
On the final weekend of the season, for example, there wre on average 7.3 Italians starting per Serie A team, 6.9 Spaniards per Primera Liga side, and 4.9 Germans per Bundesliga XI.
Although Italy, Spain and Germany all qualified for Euro 2008 and are among the favourites to win the tournament, the Premier League rightly rejected attempts to link the performance of the English national team with the number of foreign players top-flight English football. After all, England were under-performing on the international stage long before the number of foreign players in the domestic League became an issue.
England's only success remains winning the World Cup in 1966, and for all but the last dozen or so of the intervening 42 years, the English top-flight was overwhelmingly stocked by British-born players.
"Merely looking at numbers of England players in the Premier League is a blunt and misleading measure as to how well the national team should be doing," a Premier League statement argued.
"After all, in the 70s and 80s the vast majority of players in the top flight were eligible for England yet we routinely struggled to qualify for tournaments, let alone perform in them.
"Our figures show this season nearly 40% of the starting XIs were qualified to play for England, 10 of whom played in the Champions League Final, arguably the highest standard of football in the world.
"There is no shortage of players at the highest level to pick from but we all want to see more Englishmen capable of performing at this level.
"That is why Premier League clubs invest more than £40m a season in youth development, that is why the Premier League, along with the FA and the Football League, are driving through reforms to ensure the quality of coaching and player development is of the highest standard.
"We must raise standards, not implement something that will never happen under European law and would only create a broader pool of average players rather than a deeper one of the right level of talent for Premier League clubs and England."
goal.com
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All hail the Non-English Premier League
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